Continuing our walk from Praia de Faro, we crossed a foot bridge and then walked back along the edge of the San Lorenzo golf course and through Ludo salinas. As well as a wonderful walk of about 8 miles, it's also a fantastic place for birding, with a wide variety of habitats including beach, ocean, sand dunes, salinas, woodland and best of all a freshwater lake with a hide. From the hide it's possible to see a fine array of typical southern Iberian species depending on the time of year, including purple swamphen, glossy ibis, occasional ferruginous duck, little bittern, spoonbill, azure-winged magpie, waxbill and much, much more. I've been here many times previously so I wasn't expecting any surprises, but in the days leading up to the trip, I'd heard a rumour that there was a red-knobbed coot on the lake, which would be a new Portugal tick for me, so of course I was interested in seeing it.
On arrival in the hide I mentally ticked off all of the usual suspects in a sweep of the lake, but then noticed that the main coot flock of perhaps 80 birds was on one of the fairways at least 400m away. I didn't have a telescope with me and at that range with just binoculars I had no chance. We were staying nearby so I resolved to return at dawn the following morning.
Next day the coot flock was in pretty much the same place, but now I had more time and worked my way around the edge of the golf course for a closer look. I remember seeing a red-knobbed coot near Huelva a few years back and I was struck then by how different it was to Eurasian coot and how much it stood out from the flock. Todays bird was the same, even though the flock was still a little distant and the red knobs were not particularly obvious, I immediately picked up the bird just from jizz.
This is a very poor photo taken at dawn in half light, but straight away you can see that the bird top right is a red-knobbed coot. Immediately noticeable is the "fluffy bum" typical of the species. Then on closer inspection you can see how the shield shape is different to the adjacent Eurasian coot, with the bird lacking the notch where the shield meets the bill which is so obvious on it's commoner cousin. You can even see that the bill looks powder blue, quite unlike the almost pure white bill of Eurasian coot. Finally, you can just about make out the red knobs above the bill. Another feature which is not evident in this photo is the squared off shield. Look at the photos of Eurasian coots elsewhere in this post and you can see how rounded the top of the shield is. However red-knobbed coot lacks this rounded appearance and the top of the shield is distinctly flat. A very welcome addition to my Portugal list!
San Lorenzo lake and hide.
Red-knobbed coot.
Red-knobbed coot San Lorenzo golf course, Portugal. Note the squared off top of the shield.
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